Yeah, more already! ...And some new surprise additions.

( Sims 3 x42 )

Well GAH, I had a stressful few days being behind on my work. There's only a month left before handing in so I'm slipping into the "oh shit FINISH STUFF" mentality and it's not that helpful because I feel I have to do everything at once.

Wednesday was pretty bad because I stayed up late typing stuff and STILL didn't think it'd be enough. Then next morning I ran all the way to the train station thinking I was gonna miss it, to find the train had been cancelled. And the air was cold that morning, so my lungs broke a bit. Got a later one, had a tutorial where I was told to not worry so much about being perfect the first time or I'll NEVER get anywhere etc. Found a canteen that was serving roast pork for lunch and I was like FFFF yes.

And the seminar that day was just being talked at for a couple of hours. I actually watched other students falling asleep. I dozed slightly too, having like 5 hours sleep or whatever, until the tutor said writing for TV was less about writing and more about editing, and to think of ourselves as "script engineers - try to solve problems" and then I kinda perked right back up. :|

Oh and the hot Greek guy wore an open shirt. I could see his chest, but he looked really cold. Wtf man.


Anyway I've got a pretty big screenshot dump to stick in here.



( TF2 (x5) and Sims 3 (something like 50) )

I'm not at uni this week although I REALLY SHOULD be working on a few things. Also, drawing. But drawing's not coming easily to me right now, so.


HOWEVER, I AM KICKING SO MUCH ASS you don't even know. This game's BETTER than Diablo. Everyone has an animal familiar (and mine make a great meat-shield while I'm shooting from afar), it's so much more fun to look at, GUNS ARE COOL, and it's not like it could be WORSE since it basically copied every aspect ever. And then added a couple useful things.
The only thing that worse is that in Diablo, you used to be able to watch your character become more and more armoured for battle as you found higher grade loot. Torchlight falls in that category of games where more visible skin = more protection! Apparently my armour value is higher now that I have an exposed midriff.
At least, it's like that for the female class, not sure about the two male ones.

( Cutting a small batch of TF2 shots )


Pyreo says: I always imagined sleep was the brain defragmenting.
McT says: Yeah, supposedly it is. |~~|
Pyreo says: And then I seriously wondered if that means.. when a computer does it, the computer dreams.
McT says: ....hmmmm.
McT says: That'd make an oddly sweet little story, aw. *Snk*
McT says: ...though I can only imagine what it dreams of. Oooh, Word.
Pyreo says: Paperclip. = =
Pyreo says: "I see you're having a dream!"
McT says: .....aaahllsdkfj.
McT says: And then it does that suggestive look it always does. |; ;|
Pyreo says: "Want me to spice it up for you?"

brb Torchlight

oh god I'm laughing so hard seriously


Iiiii saw 9 this morning. I liked it, I really kinda did, but you wouldn't know from hearing me talk about it. I've been complaining about the plotholes. None of that shit made sense I swear to god. It's like. There wasn't really a purpose to the story or much of a meaning behind it, not much meaningful interaction, it just happened because it did. It felt so. Shallow. I could come away and never think about it again (that is if the plotholes didn't nag me). It was more like a kid's story.
But the setting? Death! War! Extinction! Terror-inducing steampunk monsters! So who the HELLS knows where their demographic was. I liked everything visual about it. The ruined city, the house just perching on its centre struts, the world being war-ravaged and humans losing control of the weaponry they were using. It was chilling. And that snake/spider-esque lure monster. Oh my god. It was using their friend's dead body to give them epilepsy!

I have some kind of huge THING for industrial settings and this fueled the hell outta it. The ending was major WAT. Life will EVOLVE again? Yeah sure - a few million years AFTER the Stitchpunk guys who were left wear out and die! Unsatisfying end and too many deaths means I lost my emotional investment.


UH BUT ANYWAY. So Kathy's fireworks party tonight, fireworks weren't that great and more like distracted from me trying to catch up with her. Still didn't have enough time to say everything. I have a sore voice now 'cause I'll talk a LOT when I have a friend around but since I hardly ever do, all the talking is this massive single burst.
She made this cheesecake (nicknamed AidsCake after how predictive phone text understands it) and I took home a slice.

I guess I didn't write anything about my classes but they were kinda standard. Fiction seminar is just urg early and my group never shows up any more. I did finally get the guts to show her some writing and she just pointed out minor dialogue flaws and told me I have a talent for this. Screenwriting I dreaded way, way too badly and then it turned out nobody cared about the work I thought we had to have done, as a group, so we all just did it there in lesson time. And I like our group project, we've all contributed stuff and moulded a pretty good world and story. Luckily it is still relevant to my interests.

Yeah so I'mma make an update instead of going to bed!

Thursday's class was fuuu-uuun, my series proposal went over pretty well and even though we had to discuss and make decisions on it as a group, a lot of what I liked got into our agreement. I did my 5 page treatment, somehow. I don't think I started it until 3am. Then I got talking with Alan and Meike about it and they were all HAVE IDEAS and something came out. I surrendered for bed at 5am, then got back up at 10 and carried on until 5 pages were had. (In fact it would've been more, my line spacing was 1.5 when it SHOULD have been 2.)

The funniest thing is that the whole script is like NEVERHOOD MADE INTO HUMENS. And while I TRIED to divert the similarities, Alan kept unknowingly putting them BACK, lollll.

Also in that class we played some status impro games. I was like FFFF NUHH. I DID THAT ALREADY ONCE DO I HAVE TO? That and the group system got me talking to a bunch of people and getting a bit over my tendency to assume I'll be shunned for some reason.


And then on Friday, I saw Up. With my mum and sister. Pixar, I love you completely, you know that, but something about Up didn't stick with me quite like all their other films did. A good, good movie overall, just not on par with the brilliance of WALL-E or the classic humour of Toy Story or the cute factor of Finding Nemo. It was just kinda THERE. The flying house was a bit of a gimmick rather than being a memorable piece. In fact I was just following the points of the story arc the whole way as it plodded along. Oh, there's the story goal. Oh, he's got a dilemma choice. Look, we're at the lowest point now. Made it feel rather formulaic. In fact it stuck to the formula rather rigidly and left out explanations so it had to rely on coincidence.
I could criticise it, but I liked it on the whole. The talking dogs were freakin' random thematically but they were the best part. Alpha Dog's voice was the only thing that got a real full laugh from me. And the Old Man Fight. *snk* And HE'S FIGHTING AGAINST A SWORD WITH HIS CANE JUST LOOK HOW MUCH WE CAN REINCORPORATE GUYS. LOOK.
The theme was so damn cute once I got it, y'know, "you don't NEED to fly your house to the wilderness to have an adventure - adventure is wherever you find it" or something, but then it's like... okay, his is already over then! And he's old! :D ...Maybe I'm too pessimistic.

So Halloween... the most Halloween-y thing I did (apart from scoring dozens of trick or treat points on (fluff)Friends to get that cat...) was playing a lot on TF2's Halloween Event map. It has vague backstory, and a ghost! And I won a hobo hat. :D I suck at that map though. KOTH is hard so I just went back to 2fort. And got in group circles with people and did the Thriller dance taunt over and over. Got an epic amount of points as a Pyro, including a huge Spy massacre and walking right into their base, taking their intel, and wandering back out alone and finding no resistance. Twice.

Oh today didn't go well. Stayed up way too late just to put together another TV series proposal - I didn't get any good ideas until 2am. Then discovered I couldn't even email the work in because Firefox doesn't open email windows with the 'Reply' option visible and IE just doesn't work at all now.
And I had to come in for a tutorial, they're only 10 minutes but god I hate being put on the spot. Maybe it'd be okay if I had some conviction in what I was writing. Or even if I did, I'd end up being told I don't know what "good" is.

I'm just trying to remember that of my classmates' work that I've seen, I'm actually the only one who's managed the correct rules of grammar, so I can't be THAT bad.

I just missed my bus home and waited forever for the next (while 3 of EVERY OTHER BUS went past - why do they do that??) and then eventually found that since I'd got a later bus I had to get a later train... which had been cancelled. And I panicked because I didn't want to be stuck for an HOUR. ...But in the middle of a phone call asking if I should attempt taking a cab, they un-cancelled it. ....Okay sure.

And now I'm supposed to give in at least 5 pages of a treatment tomorrow and I don't know what to start with. ..... *flop*

So instead here's some quotes and screenshots.


McT says: ...seeing that the headcrab zombies still gurgle stuff all creepy-like, my head just went something like "*garble* Gentlemen...."
Pyreo says: YABBA MY ICING
McT says: I ain't touching your icing.

Pyreo says: ....This is what happens to me from reading this gay-ass comic. :|
McT says: Gay ass-comic.
Pyreo says: ....YES.


( TF2 - Dead people and people who killed me! )

I just spend the weekend in the country, it was boring, not much got done. I did sort out my work due for Fiction Writing this week, but I've also got my treatment due on Thursday and, on top of that, a pitch that's meant to be emailed in by... tomorrow. That's so not going to happen.

It took 3 hours to drive back and then we basically went straight on through to London for Showstopper. :3 Which was amaziiiing. Pirate themed this time! Because the first word suggested for the theme was "Buccaneer", and apparently Dylan just did a 29-hour show which was also about pirates, but he hadn't done a musical about them yet so he didn't mind. For song styles we got Fiddler on the Roof and Elton John. Also some drag.

So the musical started out in Seville and from there onto a ship called the Green Horn. Which in the next sentence became the Green Hornet. I hadn't seen the guy playing the main character before, but he was this worthless orphan cabin boy. And Pippa was the Captain (with a hook for a hand) and Ruth turned out to be the villain, the former Captain who wanted her ship back. They had a pretty damn good hook (...pun whoops) tune for "It's A Fine Life Being A Pirate". Ruth's character convinced the main guy to steal the key to Captain Pippa's treasure chest to help steal the money and then he'd get his VERY OWN ORPHANAGE.

And Dylan was great, as usual. He seemed even more exasperated than usual, possibly because the actors went on very weird tangents and he'd just done a 29-hour show and his voice had partially gone. And near the end he basically just had to let them all run away with it. Best bits were... the ship reaching Tortuga and there being a song about how great life in Tortuga is, with special European dance choreography, a mimed parrot battle going on behind them, and when the song ended the two burlesque girls announcing their departure from the scene with "...Let's tempt some men!" and running away.
Dylan asked for suggestings to help with setting up the pirate land of Tortuga with, y'know, the dancing girls and the parrot pet shop and then some kind of pirate Starbucks which only served rum. I tried to supply ARRbucks for the name but got overlooked. :<
And then the story went rather weird, the chest only contained the Captain's old cut-off hand, which pointed the way to a volcano where the orphan guy threw it in and trapped their crew, so Ruth's vilain could steal their ship. Ruth had the best character in the entire thing. She started off just repeating fragments of what anyone said in a dramatic manner, then turned into a villainous tour de force. She said things such as "Sit down, boy, or I'll cut yer face off" and she got into a real piratey insult contest.
Anyway she got killed by the orphan boy who'd had to sacrifice his own hand to free his crew, and then he found out Captain Pippa was his mother. From there they just went insane and claimed to all be related and gave everyone an extra name, and Ruth officially renamed the ship the Green Turtle because Dylan kept getting it wrong.

Haha. ....I'm so tired.

THURSDAY WAS INSANE

Okay so. Tuesday night I stayed up until 5am to write out some of a damn short story for my homework. I had to get up for uni 3 hours later. But I was surprised in that I didn't get too tired, was completely attentive, and took notes even though the class was dull. Critiqued other students in a group, and I dunno, it all feels pointless when I'd reviewing work by some guy who feels that dialogue such as "Hey man, relax your balls!" contributes to the story.

Wednesday night... I accidentally did the same thing. I didn't expect to, but putting together work where I have to force out ideas is hard! So there I was having to stumble out of bed, 4 hours sleep again, ended up sitting at my desk again to finish my work, part dressed, hair wet, document open, no make-up... and the train leaving in 7 minutes.

And I actually made it.

The whole journey before a tutorial is so nerve-wracking though. I always think they're going to tell me I fail too hard and what was I thinking. And I did get some very serious, probing comments, but overall I guess it wasn't worth being terrified over. She told me to watch a TV series called Madmen because it had a similar theme to what I was going for.

So after we'd been tutorial'd, Chris and Frankie and I hugpiled for moral support and went for lunch at the uni carvery (uni carvery!) and then we had an actual lesson. We talked about writing treatments and we watched Sex and the City (Oh god WHY, turn it off turn it off MY EEYYYEESSS).
Since we'd all been to see her personally, she let us out early, and then Frankie was saying she was disappointed because she'd been awarded free tickets to be in the audience for Harry Hill's TV Burp, but her buddies suddenly couldn't go, plus it's first come first served and the lesson times would've meant she'd get there too late to probably get a seat. But... the session ended early, and there's no way I wouldn't be up for it, so we just went and got on a bus that we VAGUELY THOUGHT went the right way.

Turns out BBC HQ is only 15 minutes away by bus. We got in a queue for the audience entrance that curved all around the outside of the building. Then we got bored and Frankie chose to listen to vintage Sims tracks on my iPod. They separated the queues, because Jonathan Ross was recording his at the same time and we'd all lumped togeter. And we got stickers that told us we were placed 156 in line. We had to shuffle through airport-level security.

BBC is actually a fantastic place to look at. A lot of the time I was remembering how my mum did exactly the same thing, walking into work here 20 years ago. Unlike at the QI recording they left us in a special audience waiting room, which was pretty fantastic. Everyone got two free beers each! I only drank one and that got me dizzy enough. They had a coffee shop counter for drinks and panini and I got a slice of chocolate fudge cake. 9D Also, surprise surprise, a gift shop. I found the DVD of Madmen and since I was told to watch it that morning, and happened to go to the very source to find it, and was a ittle tipsy, I paid the extortionate gift shop price.

Next to the gift shop was a life size model Dalek.

Unfortunately this is the ONLY photo I have of the whole place because I neglected to charge my phone, since I didn't know I'd be coming to this. But there we go. I don't know why it had a button that said "do not press", but I pressed the fuck out of it.

Eventually they called us in by our label numbers from the outside queue and then we were in the studio with the TV Burp set all laid out like a cute living room |3... and guess what, we came in at exactly the right time to start a new seating block, and SAT AT THE VERY FRONT. We got all excited and they tested the lights and the warm-up guy, aww he was lovely, kept us amused until he introduced Harry Hill, who entered walking past about a foot in front of me.

It takes a while to set up, but then the show was going, and they recorded it all the way through in order, only having to stop once or twice. He tends to do stupid things like squirting condiments all over his desk, and instead of saving these for last he just does it and then they pause, and stage hands with towels ready rush over and mop up, then onto the next clip. Hurr. And Harry Hill's great, he doesn't stop being funny when the cameras are off. He sits there singing to himself, making odd noises, or telling endless run-on jokes between takes.

The best thing was probably a sudden over-the-top sequence relating to Leslie Ash. It took three takes to get it right, but the final one was perfect, so we all went wild. Oh and my other favourite, Campest Sigh Of The Week. Ahahahha. If you're in the UK then WATCH IT. :| 7:30 tonight, IVT1. Remember I was in the front row. DO IT.

8'D

Urg I still have to start writing my short story for tomorrow. Only up to 500 words, it SHOULDN'T be hard, but I have to formulate the whole idea first before I begin so this seems fairly unbalanced. 8/ I should just START already because the idea is to work on it as we go.
And I'm falling behind on my homework to watch TV. Yeah.

Today we got a new character... and two returning ones.


( Virtual Soap Tiem )

Hurr good day! All I had to do for homework last night was to get down 3 proposal ideas for a TV series. It took me until past 4am just sitting here trying to THINK OF SOMETHING and not being able to while Alan tried to help by poking me into doing a series about a pigeon and I was like NUHHH I JUST NEED TO THINK OF SOMETHING BUT NOT... THAT

But yeah I eventually wrote a paragraph for each and today we workshopped them, and I was paired with a girl whose ideas actually had some similar themes to mine so I really felt less like mine were off the deep end, and we talked them over pretty successfully. We also watched clips from various dramas, from popular ones like Shameless to amateur shorts like Black Cab (which included a woman proclaiming, "I smell your jacket when you leave the room!! IT SMELLS LIKE YOU!!! DDDD'8" and then we all laughed).

And we're not in groups for the series project yet, but myself and Frankie and Chris spontaneously went off into a serious (not really) discussion about a spoof series about teenage zombies trying to fit in in the human lifestyle. Regular things like getting up in the morning, eating Brain Flakes, etcetera. You know. Yeah.


Oh and I answered a question so well the tutor asked me if I should be TEACHING the class. Yes, I'm a fucking know-it-all and I like it.

My journal has a new layout. It's the first time I've actually chosen a new one since the journal was created, making it about 5 years.

Changing that inspired me to weed out the more useless parts of my journal. I deleted a few hundred older posts; things that were boring, stupid, or redundant. Looking back at myself is weird. I knew my teenage self would sound stupid, but not THAT bad! I was all full of raeg and never stopped whining! I'd like to apologise to everyone who followed this journal pre-2007 for that.
My tags have been neatened up too, since there's a cloud of them now in my sidebar.

So, I needed to update for the first week of university year 2. It's all right actually. I always get more scared than I need to be when I don't know what's coming. Wednesday's early class isn't so bad, we're just going to be reading short stories and I have to write one for the final mark. I could have been put in a better damn editing group though, all my friends are in a different one and I'm stuck some of the same people I RAEGed about last year because they didn't pull their weight. Ghh... yes, alphabetically IS the fairest way to decide anything.
But, on the plus side, the tutor can't be bothered to get up that early so the class starts an hour later from now on! |3

Thursday's lesson was in the afternoon and probably even better, time difference aside. I eventually have to write a professional pitch for my idea for a sequential TV drama series. I don't even have to script it - just the pitch. What I'm scripting is an episode for our group series, where we formulate the idea together and then each write one episode. It's not so bad.




oh Havy
where are ur legs

Finally getting my stuff together for the start of Uni year 2. And my printer just broke. I don't use it at all over the summer - great timing.

I'll post my timetable so anyone who cares knows what I'm up to. Instead of 3 days a week tutoring like last year I'm down to only 2.


Wednesdays - Writing Fiction 1 (9am-1pm)
(ughughugh more early shit. I need to get up at 7:30 for this and if it's anything like last term I'l be half asleep for most of it. CAN PEOPLE STOP KEEPING ME AWAKE UNTI 5AM? YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. ....At least not on Tuesday nights.)

Thursdays - Screenwriting for Television Episodes (2pm-5pm)
(Should be fine, although I'm not so looking forward to script format again. I'm gonna have to watch more TV for this, hurrhurr. They want us to briefly talk about the TV drama we watch and would like to write. All I can think of is Lost, but I wouldn't want to WRITE that shit. Hm. Oh god and the email says that in our first session we'll be put back into groups for a team project. NO. NO MORE PROJECTS GODDAMMIIIIT. EVERY SINGLE ONE GOES BADLY. I'm fucked.)

So that's what I'll be doing for 2 days a week. And now back to pretending I don't have to think about working again yet.

* Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper.
* Explain in no more than five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
* Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!



Daggitnabbit, this is lame. Techie, TF2 fancharacter, running madly in a slightly uncharacteristic way. This was an art trade for me, since I was feeling all lost designing a human character for once, and got input from some friends by seeing their interpretations. (Original)
I still really enjoy looking it over, especially the gender interchangable hairstyle. As for icons, yeah I still keep them grouped by function. Applications top left, internet in the middle, programs on the right. Games along the bottom. :]

Oh and my previous desktop, which I loved the hell out of: here.

(Unlike the meme says, don't do it if you can't be bothered. :P)


Okay, I can't resist linking it... Anyone want to see the Scout being a mental moron IRL?

I guess I didn't plop page 48 in here yet. o3o

Saw my orthodontist today to look at the results of all my photos and x-rays and moulds and stuff. Right now what we're thinking is that I get 2 premolars removed from the lower jaw, then have braces to fix the alignment. They're telling me to fix the missing upper right canine (yeah that's right, I'd be a very lame vampire) with a fake tooth, possibly an implant (which uses a screw drilled into your skull). Honestly I'd rather keep the modifications to a minimum, ease the crowding and alignment, then leave it alone. I'm okay with it not being perfect. I don't like the beauty culture around making everyone have procedures for a perfect smile. I find the askew, more individual look more appealing (to a point).

Aaaanyway, tooth preaching aside, looks like extraction and braces for me, at least.


Fairground anyone?
You wouldn't believe the amount of dragging you have to do to get her on a VIRTUAL rollercoaster.

Oh, and screw you Bioshock, for having a locker scare! I completely saw that coming the moment I saw one... No horror game contains lockers unless one is going to have a body inside it.

Autumn just started, didn't it. I just woke up one day and BAM, suddenly cold.

Erf, finally I've improved well enough to be able to draw this. And it ended up being one of the more labour-intensive things I've drawn recently but ugh it's done and I can stop worrying about not getting ideas down because I lack the basic skills.

The chilling weather is a constant reminder that it's nearly term time again. I'm scared to go back to all the pressure. 8c In fact I should be reading stuff to prepare right now, but I'm not, and until now I've ignored it. I get this increasing feeling of entrapment that's making me gradually want to run off, somewhere far away, more and more. I mean, it's really not that bad, I just worry too much.


( Oh well, more Sims 3 to take my mind off it. )

Mmmmyeah.
From left to right, that would be Meike, myself, and my tard of a sister. (I'm starting to regret ordering the extra controller.)

Obviously the PS3 set up fine, after a bit of flailing and having to manually reset the display settings... it's big and heavy and shiny. And it means I can play with my long-distance best friend as if we were in the same room... I love technology.

I didn't ask anybody to redecorate. =  =
Mostly our time was spent trying to pin stickers on each other. And hitting everyone. All. The. Time. At one point we both hugged the McT-sackboy and she double-bitchslapped us simultaneously.



And we found a great photo opportunity out on vacation. ~~

LittleBigPlanet arrived today.Just waiting on the actual PS3 now, and some other packages with accessories. (Also ordered another set of ProMarker pens just because, I have a grey now! I might be able to shade normally)

I can't stop playing Bioshock. This game's amazing. Strangely, there isn't much of a penalty for dying, so why I'm so afraid and inch around corner in the dark looking for Splicers is a mystery. It still scares me and it does a very, very good job of keeping me nervous.

This is what I found most memorable so far... (I shouldn't have done this bit all alone at night)



Today I just reached the Arcadia area and the scripting to introduce Houdinis was so fun. And by fun I mean amusing while being incredibly creepy.



Problem is I don't want to kill those guys because holy crap the freakin' Scout is a Splicer.

Page 47 - why do I always work like this? I procrastinate on something for 2 months and then when I sit down to do it it's done in about 2 hours. :/ I should get on with more stuff.

( Does Sims count? )


Eeeee I wonder how close the PS3 is to getting here.